2014

Hey Fam.

Christmas was a bit different this year. No snow forts, skiing, movies, white people, sledding behind cars, mom’s Pull-aparts, Joe & Bill doing their after gift exchange hug-dance that makes everyone uncomfortable, people stopping by to sing Christmas Carols when I am the only person home, Owen getting taken out by delinquent sledders at Churchill, and of course, Gram’s Ham Logs. I am happy that Meish was home and it was terrific to talk to you all on Skype.

Fun Facts: The best looking house in this area is dark green with wooden pillars and trim. Either the husband lost a bet this week or he misplaced his man-card. When we passed by this house a few days ago the house had been painted Cotton-candy Pink!  Ugghhh. 

 

This week we taught a lesson to a family consisting of a grandmother, 4 daughters and many children. The 5 women were baptized 10 years ago in Chavez. But none of the children have ever attended church. While we were talking to them the subject of Christmas came up. One of the children said: “Santa never visited their house. I said something about the need for a chimney but I felt bad for these little guys.” On Christmas Eve, Solorio (my Companion) and I ran around to all the members to see if they had old toys or clothes. There are only a few kids in primary so we were not expecting much. The families were happy to donate.  We wanted to gather some more stuff and knocked on a few doors. People were excited about what we were doing and we ended up with armfuls of great toys.  It made us feel good to see how responsive people were. We had a large black bag full of stuffed bears, a Barbie house, 3 Barbie doll knock-offs, toy trucks, animals, a toy piano and I threw in some nerf guns and glow sticks.  We went by that night and gave one of the mothers the large bag for her to put the gifts under the tree. 

The Saturday after Christmas we stopped by to invite them to church.  We were invited in and we sat down on the edge of one of the three beds in the room that double as sofas. The room reminded me of the bedroom for Willy Wonka. Solorio played with the children and I talked to the moms about their baptisms and their responsibility to take the children to church. The conversation was very comfortable and agreeable. At one point they joked that we didn’t bring them any gifts. One of the uncles started listing the things he wanted. One of the moms said that the 26 year old wanted to marry a white guy (Yikes). “Ya, uh well, we actually need to be heading out right now.” We made like trees and got out of there (Biff). As we were leaving the moms did agree to come to church.   

They didn’t make it to church so we stopped by on Monday to see what happened. One of the ninos (children) saw us as he was running past and yelled at us asking us to come to his house “please.” The other kids ran to their parents to tell the family we were coming. As we knocked on the door we saw all of the lights go out. No one answered.

We hid in the bushes for a minute and one of the kids came out and said “I will go and tell my mom to let you in. He went inside and said: “Why are the lights out?” We will keep trying but it is frustrating to know what these people are passing up.

My thoughts and prayers are with you.